


Pamilya

by rhymeswithmonth



Category: Glee
Genre: Backstory, Character Study, Gen, Homophobia, Racism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-10
Updated: 2013-07-10
Packaged: 2017-12-18 09:00:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,574
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/878026
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rhymeswithmonth/pseuds/rhymeswithmonth
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The worst happened anyway and now she's floating through the bright white hall (head up chin up eyes up) to the nurses station, saying the name of her little boy ("Blaine Anderson, I'm his mother, I'm his mother") and the nurse is confused ("Blaine Anderson- I thought...there was a woman with him when he came in-") insisting ("He's my son, please let me see my son.")</p>
            </blockquote>





	Pamilya

**Author's Note:**

> Pamilya = Family

Joy's first memory is of her mother whispering to her about the beauty of the Philippines.

She'd been speaking English, but the musical dip and roll of her voice was a thing of the emerald hills and snowy white beaches that she described with deep reverence. She painted a wondrous picture of her birth country as if it were from one of fairy tales, beautiful but utterly out of reach. A kingdom of oceans so clear you could perch on the smooth saddle of an overhanging palm and watch the reef sharks spin in their lazy, meandering circles a hundred feet below. They would giggle and dare each other to jump, to brave the sharks and dip a scrawny, nut-brown leg under the surface.

"I was most brave one." Her mother whispered, running the brush through Joy's straight black hair, waving the strands carefully into pink curlers. "I swim with the tiger once, he let me touch him. They did not want me for eating, I was too skinny, they knew I was no good meal."

Joy loved her mother's hands. Loved the way the rough brown skin stretched tight over slender bones and knobby knuckles. The rest of her body had filled out from the carb-rich food of America, but her wrists and hands spoke of the hunger that had been the reality of her first sixteen years.

Her father didn't like her mother to speak Tagalog to them. When her brought her over to the US, little more than a child herself with a newborn strapped to her back and a husband twice her age, she'd barely spoken two words of English. They had communicated in Spanish, him a Catholic missionary and the first foreigner that Malana had ever seen.

"I was troublemaker." She chuckled, black eyes crinkling with good memories, "And he was so strange looking. I liked to visit their church with my best friend Benita. He gave me pieces of chocolate and showed me American cinema films. He was funny looking we thought."

Since the Filipino language had deep roots in Spanish, Jerrold and Malana talked almost daily for a year while Jerrold completed his assignment. And at the end of that year, Malana was pregnant with Joy's brother.

Joy often felt jealous of Danil. He may have been barely a month old when they left, but he'd still been a part of the world that their mother had loved so dearly. Danil, however, couldn't care less that he was that much closer to their heritage than his younger siblings. Danil was their father's child, even when he was very young, a perfect student at the private, all-boys elementary school he attended, flawlessly behaved at Sunday school.

Their father hired a full-time tutor for them as soon as Danil started school. Hannah was from London, had gotten her teaching certificate at a college of Oxford, and was about as properly British as one could get. As they got older, Hannah became increasingly present in their lives, making them scrambled eggs for breakfast and packing ham sandwiches for their lunches. She walked them to the bus-stop in the mornings, and home in the afternoons, helped them with their homework, and fed them dinners of chicken pot-pie, or sausages and potatoes. The only time they were truly alone with their mother was before bed, when she came to their rooms to tuck them in.

Malana always went to their younger sister first. If Danil is their father's, Camilla is their mother's. Four years younger than Joy and five than Danil, she was the baby of the family. By the time she was born, premature and sickly, Jarrold had become an established priest at their local church, with his eyes on becoming bishop, and was less involved at home. Malana tucked her waifish youngest child under her arm and coddled her like she hadn't been able to do with her older two.

Jarrold died of an infection that his body had been incubating for decades a year after he was made Bishop. Danil had just graduated with honors, and had been accepted into Harvard's medical university on full scholarship. Joy was going into her senior year, had been dating a nice boy from her bible class for six months, and was co-captain of the school tennis team. One night she got home from a movie date with Freddy to find her mother packing a suitcase.

"Joy my joy." Malana cooed, stroking her cheek gently, "My middle babe. I cannot stay here. I will be forever lost between worlds, I never got used to this country. You and your brother are Americans. You are beautiful and will be great successful. But your sister is young and weak and needs me yet."

When Danil went off to university Hannah and her husband moved into the cottage out back that used to be for a groundskeeper. But she had her own children now that take up most of her attention, twin boys who were too young to be friends. Joy assumed that she'd hear from her mother. She waited for days after they left, for a phone call, for a letter. None came for a whole year until a note arrived, penned in Camilla's neat handwriting.

 _Dearest sister,_ it read, _I know you have probably worried, but please do not. We are well and I have a new stepfather. His name is Buan and he is a good man with a large farm. He treats mama and me well, and their first baby is due in the winter. I have kept busy doing work at Father's old church and plan to start attending the local school once my Tagalog gets better. The other girls here are friendly enough, they call me "maputla isa" which means "pale one"._

_Oh sister it is as wonderful here as Mama always told us. The ocean is as warm as a bath tub and the stars shine brighter than city lights at night. It has been hard to adjust to the lack of electricity and plumbing, and I miss watching our soaps together, but there is one radio at the church and Father Jonathan lets me listen to it sometimes._

_And Joy we have cousins! And aunts and uncles and a grandmother and a grandfather. They are teaching me how to be a proper Filipina, although Lola Alaila frets that America has "drained the spirit" out of me._

_So don't worry big sister, we are happy here. You try to be happy there, you were always better than me at blending in. It's why father loved you and Danil better than me, I could never be normal enough for him. I know that your future holds all of the things that he wanted for you, a husband, pretty little children, a nice house with a garden. It is difficult for us to get letters sent out, as the nearest post office is a days journey by road, and only one man in the village has a car, but I will try to write you when I can. Give our love to our brother, mine is with you._

_Your sister,_

_Milly_

 

Freddy wanted to get married after graduation. He was set to join the priesthood, and she had inherited enough from her father to live in comfort for the foreseeable future. But when she looked into his expectant eyes all she could see was her father looking back, and the way her mother had fled at the first chance she got. Joy broke up with Freddy and moved into an apartment in the city with her best friend Janet.

She thought about going to join her mother and sister. But every time she passed by the travel agency and hesitated by the door she pictures living with a man that isn't her father, and with the baby boy that Camilla had sent a grainy photo of on Christmas. They named him Buan after his father and even at a month and a half he already looked more like a Filipino than Joy ever would.

Milly had said in the letter that they think Malana is already pregnant again.

So Joy kept her eyes ahead and walked on, settling into her Arts History program at Franklin University and working part time as a receptionist at the career centre.

She first sees Craig Anderson at the church that she dutifully continued to attend every Sunday. He was sitting three rows ahead of her, with his lovely blonde wife and adorable little boy. But Joy couldn't help but look and think that his dark ringlets and smooth pale skin made him the most handsomest man she'd ever seen.

The Anderson family was old money, had lived in Ohio for generations, and were well known in the area. Craig Anderson was a hot topic for local gossip, the beautiful youngest of three boys he'd been free to school abroad, forging connections in the banking world in Europe. He married Kathryn Dubois, the daughter of a man he'd done business with in Paris, and by the time they moved back stateside to take over role as treasurer of his father's company, little Cooper Anderson was born.

Joy stood in front of the mirror in her tiny bathroom in her shared apartment and stared at her reflection. She wore her hair the same way she had since she was small, curling it every night so that it fell in soft ringlets about her shoulders. But her skin would always be dark, her eyes brown and too small. No matter how nicely she dressed in pastel patterned sun-dresses and pearls that her Father had bought for her mother's birthday, she'd never measure up to a woman like Kathryn.

And yet, against all odds, she found that Craig Anderson's sharp green eyes followed her when she mingled with the others after congregation, when they crossed paths at the market, when she went for a walk in the park and found him reading on a bench.

They talked casually at church, but there was a new edge to their conversations when they were not surrounded by their friends and neighbours. He fascinated her, telling stories from his travels that were even more fantastic than her mother's.

He kissed her for the first time before he divorced Kathryn. It went against every moral that she'd been raised with, but she wanted it so badly. She wanted this handsome man with his sprawling house and prestigious name. She wanted to hold his arm at fancy society events and show the world that she had done it, that she had broken through the boundaries and arrived at the highest rung of the ladder.

After they got married, however, things didn't go quite so smoothly. Craig may have not cared that his peers saw Kathryn as the victim of a manipulative home-wrecker, but Joy felt their distaste for her very keenly. She may have been technically welcome at all of the most glamorous parties, but the attitude was anything but welcoming. She heard the whispers, "Mutt" and "seductress" and "gold-digger", despite the fact that she already had a small fortune to her own name. The old-boys club that her new in-laws ran with were snobby and bigoted and suspicious of newcomers.

She dealt. She kept her head high, a cool smile fixed in place. She hardened her heart. If her mother could do it at sixteen, in an alien country, she could do it too. She wrapped her arm through her husband's and numbed herself to the hateful looks and vicious rumors.

Blaine made things more difficult. Blaine was born and suddenly it wasn't just herself to protect. He was such a happy little boy, all endless wonder and grinning cheeks and bouncing energy, so innocent it made her chest constrict and breath come short. He wanted stories, wanted to know about his grandmother who lives on the other side of the world, about his auntie and half uncles and cousins who are from the places in his nature shows and school books. He reminded her so much of her young self.

So she smoothed down her son's corkscrew hair and buttons his jacket and firmly told him to stop fidgeting during church. Hannah's niece moved to Ohio to study nursing and needed a part time job so Joy hired her to be Blaine's nanny. Claire was a sweet girl, warm and straight-laced and just what Blaine needed. He heard stories of her childhood in England instead of a family who chose to abandon their own and live in poverty instead of facing the harsh realities of a world that fears anything that breaks their precious norms.

Claire dressed Blaine in little sweaters and dress shirts and bow-ties tucked under his plump little chin and he looked almost like any of his little friends. His eyes were a lighter, hazel brown than her own, his hair obviously his father's. At Joy's instructions, Claire kept him slathered in sunscreen and out of the sun so that his skin stayed pale enough to pass.

Craig's job took him out of the country as often as not, and Cooper lived with his mother and Kathryn's new husband in Chicago, so when he was gone the house is huge and empty. Joy retreated to her rooms, where the echoes of Blaine's piano lessons trickled to her ears. She liked to sit and listen, eyes closed as the boy grows more talented. Over the years he jumped from instrument to instrument, violin to clarinet, flute to guitar. The parlor downstairs filled with the things, and the music provided a welcome break from the silence. Joy knew that Claire sat in on the lessons, but she never went to see for herself.

Her son had talent, everyone told her. Her son was intelligent, his teachers say, he excelled at every hobby that caught his ever shifting attention, he got along with all of the other kids. He was perfect, Claire gushed, trying to persuade Joy to come to his first piano recital, like an angel on earth.

Partway through her second year, Claire had switched her major to early child education. "It's all because of Blaine." She said softly while they had tea in the sitting room. "I've fallen in love with how he looks at me. It's so rewarding, I want to experience that feeling every day if I can."

People began to assume that Claire was Blaine's mother. It confused the boy, he would come home unusually quiet and sit on her lap and ask. "Jenna Sanders called Claire my mum today. She said its 'cause she's always the one to pick me up from school and drive for field trips and take me to play dates. Then she asked why my real mum doesn't do that. I told her you were just always busy an' stuff and then she said that mean that Claire was my real mum just like how Alexander's dad isn't really his dad but is because he married his mum. But Claire isn't married to Dad, you are so you are my mum right?"

It was better, in a way, if the other parents assumed that Claire is Blaine's mother. It was better that they think he was white and entirely American because that meant that her son would get all of the same opportunities that the other children did. She had seen what happened to other children of "unconventional" couples. There was a little boy with lesbian mothers in Blaine's daycare who was denied entrance into the prestigious elementary school that he attended, a timid Chinese girl in Blaine's first grade class whose parents pulled her out because the other kids made fun of the way she looked.

So Blaine could be exceptional, could be good at music and math and making friends, but only as long as he stayed within the limitations of what was acceptable. Having a half Filipino, half Spanish mother would not help him win his competitions or get into a good college. It wouldn't get him a job, or a girlfriend, or the fame that he so desperately wanted, not in Ohio.

Sure there were moments when she regretted distancing herself from her only child. Sure it stung that Claire knew more about her baby's daily life than she did. But it was for his own good. It was about survival.

 

 

It doesn't matter. The worst happened anyway and now she's floating through the bright white hall (head up chin up eyes up) to the nurses station, saying the name of her little boy ("Blaine Anderson, I'm his mother, I'm his mother") and the nurse is confused ("Blaine Anderson- I thought...there was a woman with him when he came in-") insisting ("He's _my_ son, please _let me see my son_.")

Claire draws her close and sobs against the side of her head. Joy feels like she's on a pitching boat, and she clings to the other woman like a life preserver. "He's in surgery." Claire gasps into her ear. "God Joy, I don't understand! Why would they do this? Why?"

But Joy understands. It all makes perfect sense as the doctors sit her down in the bare white waiting room. There was another boy, they say, witnesses being interviewed at the school claim the Blaine had danced with this boy.

"Thomas Waters." Claire croaks from the chair beside her, removing her glasses to wipe her swollen eyes. "Blaine said that neither of them had dates, so they were just going to go together. I didn't even think..."

No because Claire is a pretty, middle-class Aryan girl whose never had to deal with ugly truths like these. It's not her fault but she could never understand. Neither could Craig, currently waiting to board a red-eye flight home from Zurich. Neither could any of the prissy, done-up wives at the monthly book-club that she'd rushed from when the police had called her to tell her that her son had been brutally beaten by a gang of thugs at his school dance.

 _I want my mama_. the thought hits her, out of nowhere. There are tears on her cheeks, silent things that just keep falling no matter how many times she wipes them away. But her mama isn't her mama any more, she's Camilla's mama, she's Buan and Mugol's mama.

There's medical jargon, which she has to sort through and try to remember with a brain that feels like its wedged sideways in her head. Blaine's skull is apparently hemorrhaging pretty heavily, suspected trauma to the brain. An obviously broken left leg with multiple fractures along the tibia and fibula, suspected broken ribs which appear to be affecting his breathing. Extensive road rash, extensive bruising. Defensive wounds to hands and arms include at least one broken finger and a suspected sprain to the left wrist. Superficial wounds to the face.

Someone beat her baby into a coma with a baseball bat . Because he's gay. And Joy realizes now that she's knew he was for a long time now. It was in his obsession with actors like Hugh Jackman and Tom Felton and the entire cast of the new Star Trek when the other boys his age were gaga over Megan Fox. It was before that when his action figures tended to wind up throwing dinner parties instead of battles. It was his growing interest in whether or not the clothes they were buying were Macy's or Brooks Brothers.

She can't think about what it mean right now, not when Blaine is unconscious and might not wake up. Not when the voice of her Catholic father is echoing in her head, warring against her own voice, praying to god that her son will be okay.

The next year is a whirlwind of surgeries to reset bone, physiotherapy to relearn basic function, and regular old therapy to heal the emotional damage. Craig stays silent throughout the recovery process. They don't have the discussions they really need to have. They pay the ludicrous bills to get Blaine as close to well as possible, but they never address the why of things.

Then they pack their fourteen year-old son up and send him even deeper into middle of nowhere Ohio to board at one Dalton Academy. They still haven't talked.

It hangs over their heads. None of them say to word but its there. Craig's business trips grow longer, Claire moves to Cleveland to start teaching kindergarten, Danil is all the way in Seattle with a fiancee and his own practice, Cooper doesn't visit now that there's nobody worth visiting. Joy sits alone in her beautiful big house and waits for Camilla's next letter.

 _Why didn't you take me with you?_ She wants to write, _Why did you leave me here in this godforsaken country were they beat children for dancing? Where my son can be perfect except for one single flaw and yet that is all they see? I tried so hard to save him but it wasn't enough. Why wasn't it enough?_

She doesn’t write. She doesn’t sit Blaine down and tell him what he needs to hear. She doesn’t protest Craig’s less than subtle hints that they want him to change.

 _“You’re perfect.”_ She would say if she were a stronger person, _“It’s one thing, one little mar but it doesn’t matter to me. Nobody is perfect all the way.”_


End file.
